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Lamont Weekly Report, January 21, 2011

Thanks to the skill and hard work of Sean Higgins and his team in the Marine Office, the shipyard work ongoing in San Francisco on Langseth is proceeding extremely well. Completing shipyard work on schedule is generally unheard of, but we seem close to achieving this incredible feat, thanks to close and careful management. She will sail back south
to the warmer climes of the Scripps facility in San Diego to complete the remainder of the maintenance work.

Too many meetings this week: 6-8 each day - among them three separate EI meetings and a good LDEO ExCom this morning. But needless to say my week has been dominated by the results of President Bollinger's announcement on Wednesday about my new appointment as Exec VP for Research for the university. I have received substantially more than 150 emails in response to this - emails with a wide range of reactions, but almost all with kind words, for which I am eternally grateful. I have tried to answer as many as I can, but if I missed you, I am sorry. Everyone's appreciation means a lot to me. Thank you.

Tomorrow I leave for Seoul, South Korea to participate in the annual POGO meeting that brings together the Director's of most of the world's oceanographic institutions - my last trip representing Lamont. I will be back at the end of the week.

Needless to say, I have been working with Art Lerner-Lam closely as I start the long process of handing off the Director's responsibilities to him. Not surprisingly this is going smoothly, but there is a lot to do - it will take several weeks to complete but I will commit as much time as it takes - nothing comes close on my priority list.

Hopefully this is the last snow for a while - I was sorry to see that it is as cold in Seoul as it is here.